Kwadwo Mpiani Hurts Kufuor's Cause, Really!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

That former President John Agyekum (Kofi Diawuo) Kufuor has carved a remarkable niche for himself in the pantheon of Ghanaian leaders and heroes cannot be gainsaid. Still, as the Chief-of-Staff for unarguably the most dynamic and progressive premier of Ghana's Fourth Republic, Mr. Mpiani made himself quite a bit notorious and downright obnoxious by acting as the public proxy for the apparent animus that Mr. Kufuor may well have harbored for Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

None of us avid watchers of the Fourth-Republican scene have so soon forgotten the publication of the National Merit/Honors List on which the names of nearly every one of the putative political foes among the key operatives of the National Democratic Congress appeared, as well as the names of NPP stalwarts widely known to be in the good books of President Kufuor, except Nana Akufo-Addo's. There were, for example, the names of Messrs. Kojo Tsikata (the man who, as Mr. Rawlings's National Security Adviser, supervised the brutal assassination of the three Akan-descended Accra High-Court Judges), John Evans Atta-Mills and John Dramani Mahama.

And when Prof. Mike Ocquaye publicly criticized the Presidency for treating the then-ruling party's Presidential Candidate for Election 2008, Mr. Mpiani further slighted the former Attorney-General and Foreign Minister by listing Nana Akufo-Addo's name among the second-tier of Order-of-Merit awardees. It would take another wave of public criticism from within for the former NPP-MP for Akyem-Abuakwa South to be brought on par with Mr. Kufuor's former political associates of the so-called National Democratic Congress.

Actually, it was under the antecedent of the NDC, the so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) and the then-Flt.-Lt. Jerry John Rawlings, that the future President Kufuor had served as a cabinet appointee in charge of Local Government. More mature and principled politicians like Mr. Victor Owusu, also a former Attorney-General in the Busia-led government of the Progress Party, had flatly rejected the lurid overtures of the wet-eared half-Scottish Mr. Rawlings.

And so it is rather ironic for Mr. Mpiani to claim that the hard-earned reputations of every one of the rational and objective critics of Mr. Kufuor "were made who they are today [only] after serving in the erstwhile Kufuor administration" (See "NPP Fails to Recognize Kufuor's Contributions - Kwadwo Mpiani" MyJoyOnline.com 4/15/14). I don't remember Prof. Ocquaye, for instance, being any far less significant a personality in Ghana prior to the emergence of Mr. Kufuor as a dominant figure on our national political landscape. And neither was the name of Nana Akufo-Addo totally unknown, both in terms of pedigree and on a personal level.

Indeed, except for those younger politicians of my own generation, such as Mr. Kwabena Agyepong, almost every political figure who played any active role in the Kufuor government had been afforded such prime opportunity by dint of diligence, and not sheer happenstance, as Mr. Mpiani would have the rest of us believe. After all, the New Patriotic Party was not founded and operated by a single man named Mr. John Agyekum-Kufuor. Their names may not have been household names prior to serving in the Kufuor administration, but they were, nevertheless, quite recognizable in their respective academic and professional circles.

Besides, Mr. Mpiani's former boss did not achieve his indisputably formidable national political status wholly by himself. The very ideological vehicle in which he had ridden to the Osu Castle (now Flagstaff House), was inspired by the genius of political giants like Drs. J. B. Danquah and Busia; Messrs. S. D. Dombo, Obetsebi-Lamptey and William Ofori-Atta, and George Alfred "Paa" Grant, to name a few. So whence comes all this nonsense from Mr. Mpiani about Mr. Kufuor's being the immovable prime-mover in postcolonial Ghanaian politics?

It is also not without credence to note that in the recent past, Messrs. Afoko and Agyepong have staunchly resided in the Kufuor-Kyerematen camp or faction among the rank-and-file membership of the New Patriotic Party. But it is equally true to observe that recent disastrous political experiences on the part of the key operatives of the NPP, have provided these NPP movers and shakers adequate cognitive grist with which to mend their otherwise nihilistic and wayward ways. And this is what we ought to be focused on.

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
April 16, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]
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